We Don't Need No Stinkin' Login

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We Don't Need No Stinkin' Login

While many online newspaper readers are used to the idea of registering to read free content online, some news buffs are supporting and creating sites that help them beat the system with fake or shared login information that helps keep their personal information under wraps.

Increasingly, Web publishers, and in particular newspaper sites, are demanding that readers give up some of their personal information – like e-mail addresses, gender and salaries – in exchange for free access to their articles. The publishers say they need this information to make money from advertising. But anecdotal evidence and online chatter suggest readers are annoyed with the registration process. Some readers enter bogus information, while others are looking for ways to bypass the registration roadblocks.

BugMeNot.com is a site that generates login names and passwords for registration sites. The site is a boon to those who want to keep online anonymity or stamp out spam. According to the site's homepage, 14,000 websites have been "liberated" from registration bondage, and it's clear many people are doing whatever they can to avoid really logging in.

According to the site's creator, an Australian who wants to remain anonymous for fear of lawsuits, the site is getting about 10,000 hits each day. In an e-mail interview, BugMeNot's creator said he started the site in November 2003 after being annoyed for some time with forced registration on some sites.

"BugMeNot.com seemed like a good idea because it's something that so many people want and it's such a simple concept to implement," he wrote.

One BugMeNot aficionado, Eric Hamiter, is doing his part to help the site's cause – he created a plug-in for the Mozilla browser that gives users a pop-up window with login information when they land on a registration-only newspaper site.

"It helps protect privacy," Hamiter said.

There's also Mailinator for those who want to register but don't want to use their real e-mail address. And there's spamgourmet for "eating" unwanted e-mails. There's also The New York Times link generator put together by an Illinois teen computer programmer, Aaron Swartz. Swartz's page lets bloggers post links to Times articles that can be viewed without having to log in to the site.

So far, he's gotten a lot of positive feedback, Swartz said.

"People say, 'Oh, I use it all the time,'" he said.

But while users of such sites might think they're getting around invasive registration practices, newspapers that require users to log in don't necessarily see their policies as such.

Elaine Zinngrabe, general manager of latimesinteractive, which runs the Los Angeles Times' website, said the newspaper began requiring online user registration in June 2002 as a way to learn more about its readers and, it hopes, to drum up more advertising on the site. The Times asks readers to reveal things like their ZIP code, age, gender and income.

"I think if people are annoyed at anything, it's that it takes them the minute or whatever they have to do it," she said. "I'm sympathetic to it. We're constantly looking at how to make the process easier."

Zinngrabe sees registration as a sort of trade off for viewing online content. She's not thrilled about BugMeNot and services like it, but said she's not worried about users sharing login information. This is, in part, because the Los Angeles Times' site lets users personalize their news by signing up for newsletters and getting local weather.

"It doesn't make you necessarily want to share, because you want to get what you want to get, and you don't want other people messing around with that or changing it or whatever," she said.

Dipik Rai, a business manager with Knight Ridder Digital who runs online registration for some of the company's newspapers, is also unfazed by those trying to avoid creating their own user profiles. Knight Ridder Digital began rolling out registered-user-only sites in October 2003, and added several more this spring. Now, nine of its 27 daily newspaper sites require registration to view articles, he said.

Some people will always be unhappy about having to register, Rai said, but the company has received only a small number of complaints about it.

Like Zinngrabe, Rai doesn't see the information gathering as an invasion of readers' privacy. He said Knight Ridder Digital is very upfront about why it's gathering data, which it uses to figure out who's using its site and to target advertising.

For both companies, registration seems to be working. Rai and Zinngrabe said initially their sites saw a downturn in use after initiating compulsory logins, but levels soon returned to normal. According to Rai, Knight Ridder Digital has about 2 million members.

And as for the possibility that the data they're gathering might not be an accurate reflection of their readership, both said the vast majority of it appears to be when checked against things like third-party aggregate data and the number of registration-confirmation e-mails sent out that bounce back.

Still, "I think there's always going to be some element, some percentage of people that are going to want to get around the process," Rai said.

Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, is one of them. When he enters a site that asks for his name, rank and serial number, Tien enters fake information or uses another person's ID.

Tien said the EFF, a nonprofit that seeks to protect people's rights online, has "a very clear bias in favor of no registration." But he acknowledged newspaper sites can certainly ask for it and users can decide whether to comply.

"I can't really fault The New York Times any more than I can fault any other business for asking for information," he said. "I don't think it's necessary. I'd prefer if they didn't do it, but I can't say it's wrong or they shouldn't do it."

Those fearing possible legal troubles for running sites like Swartz's and BugMeNot might be assuaged by Tien's assertion that it's unlikely newspapers would try to go after them.

"If it's a free service in the first place, they're not exactly losing money," he said.